The Coyote's Bicycle (47 page)

Yet bicycles hold very special attributes that grant them access. They are both the object and the means by which to move that object. Like a dollar bill, once a bicycle leaves the hand of its owner it becomes general, joins the ambiguous idea of the thing—the sea of dollars, the sea of bikes.

In the dust trails of their travel, I thought I glimpsed answers to the way things worked. I believed their unique qualities were what led the swamp bicycles to illustrate, for me, certain central equations. Take value, for example, how an object or service is worth nothing until somebody wants it. How once we prohibit something of value, we instantly create a smuggler. The more resources we put into enforcing the prohibition, the higher the value of the thing being smuggled. The higher the value of that desired item, the more incentive there is for the smuggler, whom we created, to smuggle it. How the business and jobs of enforcement rely, in the end, on the business of smuggling. An endless cycle that also helps to explain how these criminal and enforcement worlds overlap like rings on a pond. And how once you begin to pedal among either smuggling or enforcement circles, the circles only become smaller and more elite as you naturally travel up, until one day you're pedaling around in a specialized training scenario meant to replicate a compound in Pakistan where commando forces practice for an operation whose success the president of the United States will hang his hat on—will win an election on—and will change the way we view our place in the world.

By now, the shiny new border construction responsible for filling in Smuggler's Gulch with 1.7 million yards of dirt had been completed to the sea. One could argue that this edifice put an end to the bicycle coyote's technique. Yet I continued to receive photos and reports of new bikes found in the valley. A plan to replace the entire string of aging seismic censors failed to receive funding.

In an interview that El Negro conducted with Roberto's mentor Julian, a
pollero viejo
who had observed changes in the business since 1960, Negro asked, “With all of the walls being built, do you think someday you won't be able to cross people into the United States?”

“Of course I don't believe that,” Julian said. “One door closes and another one opens.”

Roberto was more specific on this point. He said, “The deal with walls is just, you could say, smoke and mirrors. They're built in order to say that the United States is fighting the flow of immigrants. In reality, it's nothing. What's happening is that more people are working in government, and they all have opportunities to make illicit money through their work.”

Smugglers understood that by erecting an ever more massive border complex, by doubling and tripling agents and resources, the government was also building the pipelines through which people and contraband might pass. This wasn't only a matter of gaming physical obstacles and boundaries. Social scientists, internal affairs investigators, and attorneys general have often estimated a 10 percent rate of corruption among various law-enforcement entities. This number is sometimes dismissed as insignificant. Yet Homeland Security, of which Customs and Border Protection is a part, is the country's largest enforcement agency. And that scale matters. In fact, when
CBP
fired James Tomsheck, its head of internal affairs, as the agency suffered a wave of corruption cases and a leaked audit that suggested it did little to investigate allegations made against its officers, Tomsheck went on record as saying he was scapegoated by a corrupt system. He estimated 5 or 10 percent of
CBP
's agents were already corrupt, and “the system was clearly engineered to interfere with our efforts to hold the Border Patrol accountable.”

This point about percentages is one that smugglers claim to manipulate at ground level. The number of Border Patrol agents was doubled under the George W. Bush administration, when the agency eventually grew to employ twenty thousand officers. This gave smugglers a possible two thousand agents to work with. The heavily debated border-reform bill, the Secure Our Borders Act,
called for another doubling of agents. Rather than concern coyotes, this effort suggested there could be as many as four thousand amenable officers on their side.

“The United States government does visible, grandiose things in order to be seen,” Julian said, “like the enormous walls they build. But they themselves know it does no good. They do it just so the people will see they are doing something to combat the flow.”

There was another high point nearby that I'd long admired for its vantage. Peregrin and I could see its pinnacle from Spooner's Mesa. Even before I glimpsed the coyote bikes, I'd pedal or hike up to certain lookouts on Point Loma—the swayback peninsula that rises to 422 feet to face the broad Pacific—always on the first evening of a Santa Ana wind. These breezes that start off cool in the box canyons of Utah cross the desert and bloom into hot, offshore gusts that completely transform the face of the south coast. Tan, chalky cliffs, slate-blue ocean, and dusty green hillocks warm into the true colors following a morning rain—but with something else, an atmospheric patina reminiscent of an old photo. That past-meets-present clarity is what takes me up to the lookout. Because on the horizon at sundown, San Clemente Island looms out of the west nearly fifty miles away. Normally the island is completely invisible to the naked eye, but at times like this, landscape detail emerges from a great distance.

I often thought about the last bikes trapped out there on a craggy, mysterious island that appeared only during rare atmospheric conditions. Part of the appeal had to do with the restricted access, as civilians weren't allowed near it. After the swing gang mentioned that, given the speed with which bikes disappeared from military bases, San Clemente Island was probably the only location where the swamp bikes could be said with certainty to exist, I had the occasion to interview a lobster fisherman who happened to work the backside
of the island every fall. As he regaled me with the terrifying details of a boat sinking he'd survived out there, I found a question rising to my lips. I was about to ask the man for a ride on his new boat, out to the island, where I imagined myself scaling its desert cliffs and scouring the topside for junk bikes probably rusting away in the dirt somewhere. That's when I stopped. I finally realized how far I'd overshot my mark. Bicycle brakes never really were that good.

Months later, Watman sent word that El Negro wanted to see me. And I took this as an opportunity to make amends. En route, I tried to script an explanation for my doubts. I didn't want to lie, yet I couldn't frame up an honest answer without poking at the old wound. But when I found Negro socializing near the bathrooms below the lighthouse in Playas, no trace of a grudge could be detected.

He said, “Did Daniel tell you?”

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“I found him.”

“Who?”

“El Indio,” he said. “Come on, there is a message for you.”

We hurried along the promenade, past the coconut seller, bars, and taco stands where freelancing mariachis idled, thumbing the strings of their guitars.

“What does he look like?” I asked.

“A young guy. Regular, not real good-looking.”

“You mean he's indigenous, and you're not going to tell me anything more.”

“
Sí
,” he said.

Negro opened the black doors of the ship, and I could see that it was not rotting but was finally taking shape as the themed restaurant it was always meant to be. We took up chairs on the plank flooring. I admired a fake new chandelier made of rebar. Negro fetched his notebook. He sat and explained how he continued to visit the home of Roberto and
his family until Negro's presence had passed annoyance and merged with the everyday, like an ugly sofa. And then, one day, Indio was there. The bicycle coyote was not thrilled to be confronted, but he wasn't combative with his pursuer either. El Negro showed Indio his interviews, and they discussed the characters who filled them. Indio didn't think it was a very good story at first. But the investigator and his subject met like this several times, until, finally, El Indio was persuaded there might be something to his adventures after all. On that occasion, they sat at Roberto's small kitchen table and, because they'd become friendly, they drank Tecates together. The men looked over El Negro's notes again, and afterward, Indio dictated this letter:

First, I'd like to say thank you, because I never thought that an American would have focused on me, or something as insignificant as crossing our people to the other side. In that respect, I hadn't given the experience a lot of thought, much less to honor it by writing it down. But now I can see that, yes, it is a good story. Believe me, I would have really liked to put down the real names of the people important to this story. Because each of them deserves the mention. As I'm sure you can understand, the possibility remains that we could all end up in prison in one country or the other
.

El Negro and I have had disagreements. He is a very insistent person. I sense the majority of the time he comes out with what he's looking for. And I think this is an exception, a unique time, you could say, because he is impossible. He's always gotten some kind of response. He has insisted that I do an interview with you, and I've turned him down and I'll continue to turn him down because, well, some things hurt me too much to talk about. As I imagine you already know, Marta was the grand love of my life. A great collaborator, one of whose many gifts was this business that prospered beyond our dreams. Take care of those close to you, there is nothing more fragile than a family
.

I hope you don't get offended by what I've said. I would have liked very much to have met up with you some time. I only know you by the picture. El Negro gave me a book of yours that you had given to him. He gave it to me as proof. I feel that I know you now, by the company you keep, and by the photo. It is not easy for me to trust a citizen of the country into which I passed so many of us illegally. Pardon my sincerity. Really, you don't need me at all. What you needed, you already have
.

When you're finished reading this, please drink a
chelita
[cold one] to my health. And I will do the same and toast your work
.

Gracias amigo,
El Indio

I continue to visit El Negro aboard his ship. The themed restaurant opened for one week and closed. For El Negro's sake, I hope it's for good. We talk about tunnels and submarines and other mysterious things. We talk about writing and the machinery of stories. He tells me that El Indio did something no millionaire American would do—he took up a career in manual labor. Indio bought a truck, a lawn mower, some rakes, shovels, and Weedwackers—and he started a landscaping business. He goes to work every day. Negro says El Indio is softening to the idea of the three of us getting together, drinking some cold ones, and talking about bikes. At these times, I wonder if El Negro himself composed that letter from El Indio. If he did, it wasn't his best work, really. So I continue to believe that it came from the bicycle coyote's lips, and I believe all of the other bits El Negro tells me, even about ghosts who sometimes sit down to drink with you and tell you what they've been up to
en el otro lado
.

I continue to pedal the Free Spirit around the neighborhood and the city. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't spot a landscaping truck, its bench seat burdened with workers. I always look—especially when I'm on the saddle of the Free Spirit. I look through the
windshields and into the cabs of those trucks for a worker with an eye for a bike; the narrowed gaze of appraisal, the glint of familiarity. I'm sure I've made a number of landscapers pretty uncomfortable. The moment will pass. I'll ride on—and then I'll imagine all of the swamp bikes still out there, ferrying new people to new places, their spokes a blur spinning out new stories into the world, the details of which I'll just never know.

A Note on Sources and Acknowledgments

While researching the development of the bicycle, my reading stumbled upon historical accounts that, for me, have become like favored items I keep in a kind of mental
Wunderkammer
—a cabinet of curiosities. Often, in the process of writing this book, I'd return to these images, dust them off and spin them around. One is set at the Paris
Exposition Universelle
in the summer of 1867. Inside beautiful fair buildings, artists, explorers, and scientists had assembled a collection meant to represent the forefront of human knowledge. So much effort had gone into selecting these astonishing displays that, it seems, the entire endeavor overshot a development that had occurred practically in the shadows of its scaffolding: the humble bicycle.

French inventors had just recently given the bicycle pedals, an event that held implications for all forward movement. Yet the bicycle was not admitted among the achievements of the exposition. The slight did not matter: regular Parisians rode their new bikes to the fairgrounds anyway, and, at the exposition steps in the
Champ de Mars
, they pedaled their wheels in lazy, entertaining, joyous circles.

Twenty-six years later, the main attraction at Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition was none other than George Ferris'
monstrous wheel, a contraption that looped thirty-six passenger cars 264 feet into the sky. It was an iconic engineering achievement intended to rival the Eiffel Tower, as well as, essentially, just a giant bicycle wheel: axel, spokes, rims and all.

Another scene I return to occurred indoors on wooden, elliptical rinks. As the bicycle craze of the late 1800s hit America, manufactures realized that a major impediment to sales was the fact that potential customers didn't know how to ride. The go-around was to establish cycling schools. When I discovered, through El Negro's interviews, that the bicycle coyote organized such lessons for migrants who had not yet learned to balance on two wheels, the distance between the very first beginners and those on the border with El Indio's gang collapsed for me—I saw only gyrations through time.